Menswear Category Design Lead

About the roleThis is an exciting opportunity to join the menswear design team at John Lewis leading all Own Brand products, special projects and collaborations.

At a glance

• Expected Salary - £71,100 - £99,000 (dependant on experience) 

• Contract type - This position is a Permanent contract beginning March 2025

• Working pattern/flexible working - The Partnership has adopted a hybrid working approach meaning you'll be able to work a mixture between the office and home based upon your personal needs whilst balancing the needs of the business. The Design team aim for around 3 days a week in the office to connect and on a more ad-hoc basis to attend key meetings. 

• Location - This role is based at our Pimlico Head Office campus. Please note, any cost incurred as a result of travel to the office is the responsibility of the successful candidate. There is no travel allowance for this role. There is also a responsibility to visit our John Lewis branches / Suppliers / Trade Shows when necessary. You will be able to claim travel expenses for these journeys. Travel to the far east and Europe may be required for this role.

• FYI - Please note, the application process requires you to upload a portfolio / examples of your work. If you are invited to attend an interview, you will be required to provide your portfolio to the assessors as well as present a project that will be provided to you in advance

As a Category Design Lead in the Product Design Profession, you will be highly experienced in your creative field, a commercial, customer-focused and strategic individual. You will have substantial experience in people and project management and demonstrate a passion to develop and acquire leadership skills and capabilities.

You will be responsible for setting the clear product design direction within your category and contributing to the seasonal and sub brand product design direction, set by the Director of Design.

You will lead a team of specialist designers, empowering, inspiring & designing products alongside where and when necessary for your category to create distinct, relevant and customer-centric Own Brand products, utilising customer insights to design products that will delight our customers and achieve the planned growth in sales.

This role will require you to use in-depth industry knowledge of your specialist area, to understand strengths and carve out areas of competitive advantage for John Lewis & Partners, ensuring we are at the forefront of innovation.

Key responsibilities 

• You will play a part in influencing the overarching, seasonal and sub brand product design direction, led by the Director of Design, through a clear vision & understanding of your specialist categories.

• Set clear direction, clearly assigning & managing tasks and projects within the team, to achieve the best creative & commercial outcomes for our customers on an annual and bi-annual critical path.

• Ensure key category trends are covered and interpreted commercially by design, while remaining customer-centric and in keeping with the Own Brand strategy and vision.

• Drive efficiency and performance forward to deliver deeper product differentiation, ensure our customer offer is truly unique and ultimately optimise our design hit rate.

• Coach & empower a team to design and develop original, relevant and distinct product collections within the Brand / Sub Brand framework ensuring specifications are appropriate to the manufacturer and within the market.

• Empower and support team members to make decisions and resolve challenges and take responsibility for the development of team members skills and capability.

• Demonstrate strong creative leadership, with ongoing investment in self to develop your own style, practicing & learning new creative, design & leadership skills, that will draw out the strengths within your team & ultimately deliver more for our customers and business.

• Create great working relationships with relevant product leads & decision makers in buying, merchandising, sourcing & tech to agree and then to achieve stretching goals and ambitions for your product categories. Shared KPI’s with the relevant buying and merch leads.

• Optimise your external design network to bring in handwriting or skills not fulfilled in-house to contribute to our competitive advantage within specialist areas in which we aim to lead.

• Leverage insight and internal and external networks to keep abreast of key customer requirements, market trends and conditions, product trends including technological advancements.

• Limits risk and protects intellectual property with clear records & archiving of design.

• EU and International travel may be required to develop products as appropriate.

Essential skills/experience you’ll need 

• Substantial Experience in People Management, demonstrating a passion to develop and acquire leadership skills and capabilities.

• Menswear design experience

• Extensive Experience in project management, can clearly demonstrate organisational skills.

• Proven commercial focus and understanding.

• A track record of high calibre creative achievements.

• A strong understanding of the JL&P brand, customer base, the brand values and potential for product.

• Ability to switch between strategic creative thinking, guiding product design, creating creative  direction documents, designing & development of a team.

• Strong ability to articulate and communicate design aesthetic and the nuances between brands.

Desirable skills/experience you may have

• BA degree in Design (Product, Fashion, Furniture, Textiles, Surface Pattern, Decorative Arts)

• Substantial experience within a retail product design studio

• Good external network across the design industry

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About The Partnership

We’re the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We’re not just employees, we’re Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there’s never been a more exciting time to join us.

We’re ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food-lovers in Waitrose.

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect.

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we’re free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective.

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.

Important points to note:

It’s important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting. If required, you’ll find out more about vetting throughout the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays.

We also recommend that you apply as soon as possible as vacancies can close early if we see a high number of applicants.

We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview.